Pia Camil

Velo Revelo

February 26, 2020–January 3, 2021

Pia Camil

Valparaiso Green Cloak for Three

2016
Stitched fabric
81 1/4 x 175 inches installed (206.4 x 444.5 centimeters)
© Pia Camil, Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo
Photo credit: Amy Coon

This yearlong exhibition in public spaces around the Clark features a new, site specific installation by Pia Camil, as well as two of the artist’s large-scale sculptures in fabric. The title, Velo Revelo, pairs the Spanish for a “veil” and the verb “reveal.” It is named for Camil’s intervention in the Manton Reading Room, a curtain made of sheer stockings that is more than fifty feet in length and “dresses” the space, partially covering both a window of the Clark’s library and a reproduction of a painting selected by the artist from the collection.
 
In the Clark Center, two sculptures from Camil’s Skins series appear downstairs: Telluride Tunic and Valparaiso Green Cloak for Three (2015 and 2016, respectively). These monumental, garment-like forms, made of castoffs from textile factories, draw parallels, both playful and pointed, between traditional Mexican craft and the modernist American paintings of Frank Stella. In all of these works, Camil uses fabric in ways that are both elegant and incisive, highlighting questions of private and public space; indigenous craft and artistic invention; the body, gender, and identity.
 
Pia Camil lives and works in Mexico City, and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Her practice is research-driven and collaborative, and her media range from found and hand-dyed fabrics to ceramics, video, and performance. Camil has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, Queens Museum, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Nottingham Contemporary, and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.
 
This exhibition is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, associate curator of contemporary projects. Pia Camil’s work is courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo.